United States
The United States '''is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major territories, and various possessions. Geography, Climate, and Environment '''Climate El Nino helped produce an unusually mild autumn and start to the winter of 2015 across the United States, sharply cutting the demand for heating and worsening the glut in supplies of natural gas and heating oil. Indeed, warm weather and surging energy production pushed heating oil prices down to the lowest level since 2004 and natural gas prices to the lowest since 1999. Social Demographics Immigration Efforts by the Obama administration to clamp down on convicted criminals living illegally in the United States resulted in a higher percentage of them being deported in 2015. The removals highlighted an increased focus on prioritizing convicted criminals and threats to public safety, border security, and national security. Some Republican Congressmen criticized the administration for focusing on convicts, thus easing the threat of deportation for other undocumented immigrants, as a rapidly growing number of Central Americans showed up at the southwestern border with Mexico without immigration papers, including a surge of unaccompanied children in the latter half of 2014 fleeing from gang violence and economic hardship. They were housed in sheltered camps in Texas near Dallas. In mid-December 2015, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, extended the deployment of state guard troops along the Mexican border to help block the crossings. Muslims Anti-Muslim sentiment grew in 2015, swept along by rhetoric from U.S. presidential candidates - from Republican Ben Carson's comment in September 2015 that Muslims were unfit for the presidency to billionaire Donald Trump's December call for a ban on Muslim immigration, despite Obama's calls for tolerance. Some Muslim families - after the Paris attacks and the San Bernardino shooting in early December - feared a rising tide of hate crimes directed against their faith. Since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, there were 37 suspected anti-Islamic hate crimes in the U.S. Young Muslims felt the need to prove how American they were to distance themselves from radicals. When schools in a Virginia county closed on December 18, 2015, as a safety precaution after a class assignment asked students to practice Arabic calligraphy using a Muslim statement of faith, the angry outcry from parents and threats against school officials reflected the anxiety and distrust of Muslims among some Americans. Sexual Orientation In a landmark decision on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could marry nationwide, establishing a new civil right and handing gay rights advocates a historic victory. The decision affirmed growing public support in the U.S. for gay marriage, but conservative firebands fought against the divided decision. In Kentucky, Kim Davis, a county clerk, refused to issue any marriage licenses after the ruling, resulting in her jailing in September 2015. In response, the new governor, Matt Bevin, removed the clerks' names from state license forms at the center of the controversy in December. On December 21, 2015, the U.S. government and the FDA overturned its 30-year ban on blood donations by gay men, saying they could donate 12 months after their last sexual contact with another man. Previously, they were banned due to an increased risk of HIV transmission. The FDA's policies helped reduce HIV transmission rates from blood transfusions from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1.47 million. The move brought the U.S. in line with countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, which also had 12-month deferrment periods. In the military, a female officer in the Air Force, who was one of the first openly gay service members to get married, was one of the six U.S. troops killed by a suicide bomber near Bagram air base in Afghanistan on December 22, 2015. Women The first female commandant of cadets at the U.S. West Point Military Academy was sworn in on January 5, 2016, the latest milestone for American women who now are allowed to serve all military combat roles. The Obama administration intervened in the Supreme Court's first abortion case since 2007 in early January 2016, urging the court to strike down a Texas abortion law that shuttered nearly half the clinics in the state, saying that Republican-backed regulations would harm rather than protect women's health. In the past, Republican administrations had sided with states trying to restrict abortions. Government and Politics Presidential Election of 2016 The Democratic nominating race had been relatively peaceful, despite complaints from Sanders and his liberal allies that the DNC was trying to help Clinton by limiting the number of debates and scheduling them on low-viewership periods, like Saturday nights; indeed, Sanders continued to lag behind Clinton, with 29% to her 60% in December 2015 polling. On December 17, 2015, the Democratic National Convention blocked access to Bernie Sanders' voting data after a campaign staffer improperly accessed Clinton's voter files, prompting charges of theft. Sanders regained access to the voter files on December 18 after he took the DNC to court and accused party leaders of trying to undermine his White House bid and help rival Hillary Clinton. The two squared off in the combatative debate on December 19, one day after the campaigns erupted in a feud over the data breach. Billionaire Donald Trump led polls throughout the summer of 2015, despite Republican support for U.S. presidential candidate Ted Cruz rising in mid-December, gaining momentum nationally in that month as conservatives unified behind him. At rallies during the month in South Carolina and Nevada, protesters interrupted Trump, attacking his controversial proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Scandals After Ash Carter took office as the U.S. Defense Secretary in February 2015, he continued to use a personal email account for some work-related business at the Pentagon, contrary to Defense Department rules. This email issue also dogged Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in the November 2016 election and prompted an FBI investigation. The Secret Service agency weathered a lengthy list of problems in the few years prior to 2015, including a prostitution scandal in Colombia, a drinking and driving incident, and a high-profile security lapse when a man jumped the fence surrounding the complex and ran into the mansion armed with a knife. Moreover, earlier in December 2015, an officer was indicted for allegedly trying to "sext" with someone he thought was a teenager, but was actually an undercover officer. This was followed on December 22, 2015 by an agent losing his badge, gun, and radio when his bag was stolen from his car. Foreign Affairs North Africa The U.S. bombing of Libya in 2011 when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State hastened Muammar Gaddafi's downfall, but created a vacuum, which was filled by extremist groups. Middle East U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, charged with deserting his combat outpost in Afghanistan before being captured by the Taliban in 2009, faced a court-martial in December 2015 after being released in the summer of 2014 in exchange for Taliban prisoners. Some fellow troops resented the military resources devoted to searching for him, while Republicans criticized the Obama administration for the deal that freed him. Law Enforcement and Crime Drugs In November 2015, the U.S. Coast Guard and federal authorities announced a $748 million cocaine seizure after an investigation in the Eastern Pacific, in the most successful counter-narcotics operation in the region since 2009. Drug transportation featured many transport routes, including a major narcotics trafficking network from Massachusetts. On December 19, 2015, two men were arrested and nearly $3 million worth of cocaine from this network was seized in New York CIty in the biggest bust in recent years as heroin abuse surged. Corruption On December 20, 2015, two men, including an oil equipment supply firm executive, were arrested on charges related to an alleged scheme to corruptly secure energy contracts from Venezuela's state-owned energy company. Crimes In June 2013, 16-year-old Texan teenager Ethan Couch killed four people in a drunk driving crash. A psychologist claimed his condition of "affluenza" shielded him from responsibility for his actions, but he was sentenced to 10 years probation for intoxication manslaughter for the incident; however, in mid-December 2015, a manhunt was underway for the teenager after he fled to avoid violating a probation deal that kept him out of prison. On December 20, 2015, one person was killed and dozens were injured when a woman deliberately drove her car onto a crowded sidewalk on the Las Vegas strip, near the hotel where the Miss Universe pageant was being held. The scene caused a panic, considering the U.S. had been on high alert since 14 people were killed in the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, California. Gun Control A series of mass shootings at U.S. schools and colleges, including one that left 10 people dead including the student gunman at an Oregon community college in October 2015, heightened concerns about firearms on campus. Some states took more restrictive steps in gun control, such as Connecticut and Virginia. Connecticut adopted one of the toughest gun laws following the massacre of 26 young children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, leading one of the state's manufacturers, PTR Industries, to relocate to South Carolina. In Virginia, as the site of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, the 2007 rampage at Virginia Tech University in which 32 people were killed, Virginia would no longer recognize concealed-carry handgun permits from 25 states that had reciprocity agreements with the state, effective February 1, 2016. Other states, like Texas, decided in December 2015 that public universities would be breaking the law if they banned guns from student dormitories because it would violate the rights of the people with licenses to carry concealed handguns. Police Brutality On April 12, 2015, Baltimore officers arrested Freddie Gray, an African-American resident, who died from injuries sustained in transport in a police vehicle. Civil unrest broke out into late-April 2015 as thousands of police and National Guard troops were deployed, with a state of emergency declared in the city limits. Gray's death was ruled to be a homicide and legal charges were issued against the six officers involved in the incident, which intensified the debate on police treatment of minorities. Another example was the death of Sandra Bland, who was pulled over and taken into custody in Texas on July 10, 2015 for an altercation with a white trooper. She was found hanging in her jail cell on July 13 of an apparent suicide, but the death was taken up by activists as an example of racial bias and excessive force. In mid-December, a Texas grand jury decided not to issue indictments. Demonstrators camped outside a Minneapolis police station for nearly three weeks after a police officer shot Jamar Clark on November 15, 2015. The shooting of Clark, who died the next day, added fuel to the heated debate in the U.S. over police use of lethal force, especially against African-Americans. Pleas from the Mall of America - one of North America's largest shopping malls - resulted in three leaders of the loosely organized Black Lives Matter group being barred from the protest planned for December 23, 2015. High-profile killings of black men by U.S. police officers triggered waves of protest in Chicago as well; in November 2015, a police video of a black teenager sparked protests demanding the mayor's resignation, and two black Chicagoans killed by police on Christmas Day 2015 piled pressure on the city facing a U.S. federal probe over possible racial bias in policing. Illinois' Governor's aggressive stance towards the mayor added to the mounting public criticism against the police system. Terrorism On April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon, which had been held since 1987 and attracted an estimated half-million spectators, was the site of a deadly twin bombing that killed three people, injuring 264 others in a terrorist attack. The perpetrators - brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs and conducted the attacks as retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, compounded by political aspirations in Chechnya and the inability to become fully integrated into American society. A shooting at MIT and a carjacking, followed by a shootout with police that killed Tamerlan, resulted in the capture of Dzhokhar on April 19. After a lengthy trial, Tsarnaev was found guilty in April 2015 and sentenced to death by lethal injection, despite plans to appeal. Apart from three of his college friends and a cab driver who were sentenced to years in prison in June 2015 for lying to investigators, the last of five people, Stephen Silva, was released from prison on firearms charges in mid-December 2015. On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were injured in a mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, by Syed Farook, an American-born citizen of Pakistani descent, and Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani-born legal resident. The married couple targeted the holiday party, where he was an employee, and fled in a rented SUV before police killed them in a shootout. An FBI investigation into the weapons and equipment, as well as travel to Saudi Arabia, centered on a neighbor, who supplied the weapons and had planned similar attacks with Farook, in mid-December. While there was no evidence of their involvement in an ISIS terrorist cell, the attack stirred concerns among Americans about national security and the reach of Islamic State, an issue in the presidential election - it also came a few weeks after gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris. Indeed, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino County. With no subsequent credible militant threats, Obama still acknowledged that lone wolf plotters were difficult to track. Even then, many Americans were fearful of random attacks in public places, a concern that flared in the wake of the shootings - on December 19, one person was shot in the leg during a fight inside a crowded Wisconsin mall, less than a week before Christmas, when many shoppers were rushing to buy gifts; another incident occurred on December 22 at a crowded shopping mall on New York's Long Island, when a suspect attempted to rob one of the stores. Economy Currency Bitcoin was a web-based "cryptocurrency" used to move money around quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority; however, despite being championed by some as the digital money of the future, it was often dismissed as a currency that was too volatile to invest in. Invented in 2008 by the mysterious "Satoshi Nakamoto," the bitcoin program was designed so that the reward would be halved roughly every four years, in order to keep a lid on inflation. In 2015, Bitcoin's price doubled in three months, putting it on track for its best quarter in two years. Prior price surges occurred due to dark-web drug dealing and a Russian ponzi scheme, but another price surge occurred in 2016 occurred due to a slower growth in the money supply, a fundamental principle of supply and demand. Taxes and Spending The federal government had shut down in October 2013 beause neither legislation appropriating funds for fiscal year 2014 nor a continuing resolution for the interim authorization of appropriations was enacted in time, due to a fight in Congress over Republican opposition to President Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on December 16, 2015 for the first time in nearly a decade, a sign it believed the U.S. economy had largely overcome the financial crisis. The Fed was confident the U.S. economy could stand higher borrowing costs after years of stimulus and near-zero rates. Many economists predicted the rates would be hiked again by the beginning of February 2016. Coincident with this rise in confidence, the U.S. economy grew at a fairly healthy clip in the third quarter as strong consumer and business spending offset efforts by businesses to reduce an inventory glut. Housing had provided a sizeable boost to economic growth in 2015, as a strengthening labor market and low interest rates had helped young adults to leave their parents' homes; however, U.S. home resales posted their sharpest drop in five years in November 2015, a potential warning sign for the health of the economy. On December 17, 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a massive tax bill that made permanent and enhanced tax credits to aid business research and development, the working poor, children, and other temporary tax breaks as lawmakers moved to avoid a government shutdown. The measure increased U.S. deficits. The House also voted on a spending bill on December 18, which was approved despite concerns about deepening the budget deficit. The Senate vote averted a government shutodwn, locked in billions of dollars of tax breaks, and scrapped the 40-year-old ban on the export of U.S. oil. Some Democrats criticized the tax cuts for giving aid to large corporations and wealthy business owners rather than to working families. Employment The end of 2015 saw a trend that pointed to strengthening labor market conditions, albeit volatile claims around the holiday session. By mid-December, the U.S. central bank claimed that underutilization of labor resources had diminished appreciably. As the labor market approached full employment, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell from a five-month high, which could lead to further Federal Reserve interest rate hikes in 2016. Energy The raising of interest rates in December 2015 supported the dollar, making dollar-priced oil more costly for holders of other currencies and undermining demand. By the end of 2015 though, oil was at an 11-year low as the result of a glut on the market. Pressured by a relentless buildup in oversupply, other potential sources of oil for international markets was extra Iranian production and U.S. crude (based on the vote to lift the export ban after four decades). The historic movement nevertheless had little immediate impacft on oil markets. U.S. crude oil prices dipped in early Asian trading on December 21, heading towards new lows as a rebound in drilling activity, a strong dollar from hiked interest rates, and brimming storage facilities weighed on prices. The oil rig count bounced back, suggesting shale producers were committed to maintaining production levels. Surging to 491 million barrels, the stockpile was at its most for this time of year since 1930, cratering the lowest price in more than 11 years, as demand for heating oil slumped on warmer-than-normal temperatures, produced by El Nino in the autumn of 2015. Health Sector The U.S. government signed up 8.2 million people for health insurance through its website, including 2.1 million people from the insurers' most sought-after demographic, those aged under 35. Large health insurers had been lukewarm on the market due to the challenge of making money there. Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli sparked controversy in September 2015 by raising the price of Daraprim, a treatment for a parasitic infection, to $750 a tablet from $13.50 after acquiring it. At least two separate Congressional probes were launched since then on pricing issues; however, in an unrelated case, Shrekli was arrested on December 17, 2015 by the FBI in New York on securities fraud charges involving his former hedge fund and his former company Retrophin Inc. As a result, he stepped down and was replaced by Chairman Ron Tilles, and major U.S. pharmacies moved to assure patients of continued access to the company's key drug, Daraprim. At the end of 2015, a new wave of wearable computing devices that detect and monitor serious diseases was moving from the laboratory to the market, potentially transforming the treatment of conditions ranging from epilepsy to diabetes, and creating business opportunities estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. Unlike popular fitness-tracking devices, such as Fitbit, these medical-grade wearables required approval from the FDA. A key driver in the new wearables wave was the push for value-based healthcare, part of the Affordable Care Act, which gave doctors and hospitals financial incentives for keeping large groups of patients healthy. As a result, an avalanche of studies on new data-gathering platforms, were under way. Technology Growth in handset sales slowed as the smartphone market matured, and without its own distinctive software, content and services, Samsug had little to differentiate itself from other Android phone makers selling similar devices at lower prices. Indeed, efforts to revive its once stellar smartphone features would be doomed if Samsung couldn't overcome its dominant engineering culture, which stymied many previous efforts to develop software and service platforms to support the business. With a growth in handset sales, Micron Technology Inc. forecasted a surprise loss for the second quarter in December 2015 as the memory chipmaker struggled with a weak demand for chips used in personal computers and lower average selling prices. Culture Celebrities The host of the 2015 Miss Universe beauty pageant, Steve Harvey, mistakenly announced the wrong winner on December 20, 2015, who then had to give up the crown and hand it over to the 26-year-old model from the Philippines. it was the first edition of the beauty show since it was thrust into controversy when then co-owner and U.S. presidential candidate, Donald Trump, made disparaging remarks about immigrants; it was also the first title for a contestant from the Philippines in more than 40 years. It was also notable for a vehicle that drove up onto the sidewalk near the event, killing one person and injuring dozens. Movies "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the seventh installment in the series, collected a galactic $250 million of global ticket sales on December 18, 2015, and headed toward a historic opening weekend in the United States and Canada as fans around the world reveled in the return of the beloved space saga as a global phenomenon under Walt Disney Co. Presidential candidate even closed one of the Democratic debates on December 19 with "May the Force be with you." Social Media On December 16, 2015, Facebook partnered up with Uber though its Messenger application, in which users could hail a ride through the social media. It was a move to aggressively boost the appeal of its messenger service, including making it mandatory in 2014 to install a separate application to send and receive messages. Throughout the year, Facebook beefed up the application's features. In competition with Facebook was Google, which built a new mobile messenging application to tap into Google's artificial intelligence know-how, integrating chatbots, or software programs that answer questions. The new application enabled users to text friends or a chatbot, which would search the web and other sources for information to answer a question. Sports One of the major issues in American football, especially in the NFL, was the risks of brain injuries. Recent rule changes, such as penalizing helmet-to-helmet hits, helped reduce the number of concussions in regular season games by 34% after concussion policies came under scrutiny in November 2015. Some 5,000 former players sued the NFL over brain injuries, claiming the multibillion-dollar league concealed the dangers of repeated head trauma. In December 2015, the film "Concussion," tracing a forensic pathologist's quest to expose the truth about brain injuries in the NFL, cast a spotlight on the issue. Infrastructure Space Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk owned and operated the privately-held company known as SpaceX, which brought the United States back into the commercial launch marketplace. In late June 2015, a Falcon 9 rocket exploded after liftoff, leaving customers still loyal but unsure. The accident was the third supply ship to fail in eight months, in which NASA's other supply line, operated by Orbital ATK, had a launch accident in October 2014. On December 21, 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Florida with a payload of communications satellites before the reusable main-stage booster turned around, soared back to Cape Canaveral, and landed safely near its launch pad in a dramatic spaceflight first. It was the first flight for the California-based company since the rocket failure in June 2015 that destroyed a cargo ship being carried on a resupply mission bound for the ISS. The ability to return the rockets to Earth to be refurbished and reflown would slash the company's operational costs in the burgeoning and highly competitive private space launch industry. Transportation Earlier in 2015, Google began discussions with most of the world's top automakers and assembled a team of suppliers to speed efforts to bring self-driving cars to the market by 2020. In June, they began testing tiny, bubble-shaped prototypes on public roads. Ford, although lagging behind most competitors, ramped up its pace to develop self-driving cars and expanded advanced safety technology, in talks with Google.